And so she got to sleep at last, and woke in terror. She had dreamed that Will Underwood, engaged in a single-handed fight against a company of the Prince’s enemies, lay wounded sorely; and she had reached out hands, impotent with nightmare, to succour him, and she had seen him fall.
At the end of the long, draughty corridor, not many yards away from her, Rupert was fighting his new trouble. He and Simon had been engaged on the King’s business--or the pretence of it--during these excursions that had taken them afield for two days past. But he could only remember now what had driven him into endeavour--how he had come home to find Nance flushed and eager, Simon carrying a couple of muskets; and how she had told him, in plain words, that women must needs take up soldiery, because the men about the house were so infirm.
Since his soul was launched into the open sea of life, Rupert had known many a Gethsemane, but the pain had never been so keen as now. His love for Nance was of the kind she claimed, but his power to do high deeds lagged far behind the will to be a conqueror. And Nance, who had always brought a sense of well-being and of inspiration to him, had wounded him--mortally, he thought. Sir Jasper had bidden him guard the house, and he had overheard his father say that the defence was a toy he left his heir to play with; and the bitterness of that was past, not without hardship and a struggle that, fought out in loneliness, was fine as a battle against heavy odds. That was past, but Nance’s taunt was with him still, a sting that banished sleep and poisoned all his outlook on the hills where Faith, crowned and a strong monarch, looks down to see into the hearts of men and choose her soldiers.
Old Simon Foster, for his part, had not slept well to-night. As he put it to himself, he “was never one to miss sleep or victuals, come peace or earthquakes”; but to-night he could not rest. He was with the master, fighting somewhere near to that London which was a far-off land to him, unknown and perilous, as if wide seas divided it from Lancashire. And he was itching to be out of a house where the mistress could still be anxious lest her spaniel missed his proper meals, where, to his fancy, women crowded all the passages and hindered him at every turn. Simon was twisted out of shape by exposure and harsh, rheumatic pains, but he was sick to be out again with the wind and the weather that had crippled him.
